The Choice
At my cousin’s wedding reception in August, her new brother-in-law brought everyone together and then handed a pair of scissors to the groom. He had decided to mark the day by shearing the long, thick braid he’d been growing for 10 years and giving it to Locks of Love, an organization that makes real-hair wigs for children who are cancer patients or have other medical hair loss. The groom was blown away, as we all were. It was a sweet gesture. I’m sure the BIL had his reasons for doing it in the first place; he announced as soon as it was cut off that he was going to grow it out again, and that at the couple’s 10 year anniversary party, they’d repeat the stunt. But it was especially poignant, at least to me and probably to anyone who knew, because the bride’s mother (my mother’s sister) had died of cancer in 1982, when the bride was just 7 years old. It touched me deeply, and I knew my cousin had married into a good family. Which is only right, because she is a kind, generous, and loving person, despite having lost big at a tender age, and then gone through an ugly divorce from a cheater 2 years ago.
My aunt, the wife of my dad’s youngest brother, currently has cancer. It’s a recurrence; she has had breast cancer twice already, and has a double mastectomy to show for it. They are not talking about it much, according to my folks, and in the absence of information we all fear it’s pretty bad. Apparently, though, my aunt did take the time to inform my mother that it was SHE who should have cancer, not my aunt, because her sister died of it and her mother had breast cancer, although she survived it. It was not news to me that my aunt had become increasingly embittered since her first diagnosis on top of a life that did not go as planned, (whose life does?), but the level of venom had reached a new high; or low, depending on how you look at it.
I can only imagine what it must be like to look your own death in the face, and I can guess that it would make you feel angry, overwhelmed, cheated, lonely and helpless, to start. I know how I’ve felt/feel all those things in losing A, and it is a black, unhappy place you wouldn’t go if the choice was yours. But I can’t imagine wishing cancer on anyone else, and her pain must be blacker and deeper than I can imagine for her to say such a thing. For that, I am even more sad for her. Even in my very darkest despair over A’s death, my most horrible question has been “How are some of these (in my estimation less worthy than A) people still alive when he isn’t?” It’s not that I wanted them dead instead; I just didn’t understand the inscrutable, incomprehensible selection process of death. Still don’t, and I know that I never will.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the people I come into contact with, people I know and strangers, and myself. What makes us the way we are? More to the point, I’ve been wondering what makes some people so nasty in a world where everything is hard enough. It’s not like we need more difficulty, more obstacles, more pain. They will find us whether we invite them or not. So why would you ever want to make it worse for someone else?
I came across a bit of truth in recent weeks that was both a reminder and a warning: “All experiences make you either better or bitter.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, because bitter is so easy to fall into; better requires more of you, and usually when you’re at the crossroads, you aren’t really in possession of that “more.” I have had plenty of moments of extreme bitterness in the last 3 months, and I’m sure there will be more regarding this event in my life. I’ve seen what bitterness does to a human soul; I don’t want to go that route. But will I know how to avoid it? Will I be self-aware enough to avoid slipping off that precipice, never to return? The dark side is the easy path; Yoda was right. It is so hard to just accept the unacceptable, even if you know that’s the sane thing to do, when all you want to do is rage against what you perceive as colossal injustice. Knowing the right thing to do is easy; choosing to do it is what’s hard.
Everyone says that a loss of this kind changes you; you’ll never be the same, and already I know that’s true. The edifice of my soul was rocked, the foundation cracked, and the clean-up is a Herculean task completed a teaspoon of rubble at a time. However, I don’t yet know how the “different” will manifest. I have a few clues. For one thing, I’m a helluva lot less cocky than I was 3 months ago. That one’s probably going to stay. Along with that, I am a lot less certain about many things, particularly in the spiritual realm, but oddly enough, I have found hope in the loss of my previous certainty in that area. I find myself looking at strangers differently, really looking at them and seeing that they are human beings with their own hidden burdens, just like me, not just extras in the scenery of my life.
Not all the changes have been positive, however. Having had my priorities in life highlighted and reassigned in a particularly violent manner, I have even less patience than I used to for bullshit, and I didn’t have that much to begin with. My filters are not working at optimal capacity, and I get irritable and verbal; not a good combo. So while I’ve rediscovered this kind of global compassion for the human condition, it seems absent from my day-to-day dealings with individuals and situations that have always annoyed me, particularly at work. My antisocial tendencies have never been greater, for both the aforementioned reasons and my general lack of ability, energy, and desire to put on a fake smiley face for anyone of late. I just want to hide out at home.
A said more than once that one of the things that attracted him to me was that I knew who I was, and I’ve pondered whether that’s true anymore. Upon reflection, I think what I lost was certainty and direction (or the illusion thereof that I thought was in force), but I am still who I always was…and then some. I feel like I’m me in a minor key, and I don’t know when this movement will give way to the allegro. But I know it will, eventually, if I can avoid the bitterness trap.
A himself is an example of survival of grief to me. He had his moments of bitterness and his down times, like anyone else, but in his general disposition he was the antithesis of that. He appreciated and savored and enjoyed the hell out of this world while he was here, and I absorbed the lesson of his example. He lost his father at a young age, but found joy in his life. His wife asking for a divorce came out of the blue to him, and wrecked him. It took him a couple years to work through that grief, but I know for a fact he found joy again, because I felt it in him. I felt it when he talked about his daughter and granddaughter. I felt it between us. Sometimes the pain of the marriage-that-was ambushed him, but it didn’t define him anymore, as it did when the pain was fresh, raw. This is just one of many gifts he gave me that, looking back, seem almost to have been given to me to be used on just this particular rainy day in my life. So much of what he believed and lived and shared with me seems particularly applicable as I learn to live with the grief that one could almost see a design in it, if one were so inclined, and the thought has crossed my mind. However, if nothing else, it is a testament to the wisdom of the man that who he was is a guide for me as I navigate the rockiest, most hostile terrain of my life. He gave me tools I’ve put to use to cope with losing him, a paradox I keep returning to in my mind, grateful, sad, and puzzled as to how such a thing should be.
I am attempting a strange balancing act, honoring what I feel—all of it—yet trying not to succumb to bitterness and darkness, both of which are things I feel in my grief. Is intent enough to save me from that slippery slope?